


do you know me, can you feel me, can you show me

by liraels



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Post-TRoS, Tros fix-it, accountability and change and growth and redemption, also guess im an accidental reylo now peace out, and how star wars canon never quite gets a handle on them but by george im going to try, and there was only ONE SEAT IN THE X WING, basically this is me trying to get my head around big notions like justice and, finnpoe if you pay attention but it's not the focus they're just in love it's a fact, rey and rose are best friends because i fucking said so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:55:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22253758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liraels/pseuds/liraels
Summary: Rey holds her breath, and feels it: this is where history turns, this is where legacy lives or dies, this is where time and space narrows into a singularity of choice.The moment ends, choices made. History rolls into future.This is where the hard part begins.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 11
Kudos: 72





	do you know me, can you feel me, can you show me

**Author's Note:**

> hey y'all i turned into a reylo overnight so like, enjoy?
> 
> this is heavy but it's HOPEFUL and i had such a good time writing it...i worked out all my complicated thoughts about TROS and star wars as a whole (so it's kinda meta, but modern star wars always is) and in the process discovered that i do like ben and rey romantically, actually.
> 
> fic title is from frozen 2...come talk to me about star wars/frozen parallels sometime :)

Rey isn’t opposed to death. Not as such.

If she’s learned anything from Jakku it’s that empires eventually become empty shells on empty sands, that governments rot and rebels die, that even the hardiest soul might be claimed by an uncaring desert. Death is natural, inevitable. It thinks nothing of light nor dark, love nor hope. Is it selfish, then, to rail so mightily against her own?

Perhaps this is retribution. She was to end Palpatine, to save the resistance, but to die anyway, in the end, for the sin of being born. She did the Jedi thing, she earned not just Luke's lightsaber but Leia's too. She earned the blessing of every Jedi there ever was and loved the earth that gave her life.

But all that has fled. Who was she, ever, to think that she might not inherit, but instead might choose?

It’s so quiet. The vast cave has no sound to echo but the soft thud of the sabers hitting the dust. She can’t remember dropping them. They slipped through her fingers like so many wasted days on Jakku, clinging to a past that would take much too long to find her. It had, though, in the end; it had found her, and she supposes that means it really is the end.

That’s the lesson she should have learned from Ben. How would her life be different if she’d left her past behind, to shrivel and die under the desert sun? Would she be here now? Would Ben...?

She wonders where he is. He’s alive, she can feel that much, blessedly. But even reaching out to him, which always came so easily, now makes her head spin. The world falls; she’s dropped to her knees.

Rey is glad he isn’t here to see this, but...it’s odd to be alone. She felt so – so _full_ just moments before, she felt one with him, with those fighting desperately in the skies above, with Finn in the infancy of his awakening, with every Jedi and with every soul out there in the galaxy who bore hope in their heart...

To be alone, for this final moment, feels _wrong._ Rey isn’t sure what it means for someone to deserve something, but she surely _wishes_ for it to be different.

It’s so quiet. She feels there should be screaming, pounding heartbeats, thrashing of limbs. But there’s only this: a soft slowing feeling, a weakening, a quieting, and

*

It’s like waking up from a midday nap on Jakku: hot, dreamy, and weary. The aching limbs and blurred vision, all familiar, but there’s less light here than in the small relief found in the shadows of the Jakku sun. Also unfamiliar is this: a press of warmth against her side, a rough hand behind her neck, another against her stomach. She’s...being held, so incredibly gingerly yet incredibly close.

It’s now that she realises the buzzed, heady feeling that clouds her is not merely a hangover from an ill-timed nap. No, it’s the same blood-rush that accompanies the meeting of wills that Rey's mind calls an inconvenient Force bond and Rey's heart simply calls _out to_.

Ben looks – different, though. His face slack, somehow clean despite the sweat and dirt. She healed his scar on the death star, but this new change isn’t physical and is far more substantial. It’s...peace.

Purpose.

When Rey takes his hand and Ben's eyes open, the draw of his face goes from slack to tight, containing what she thinks must be the brightest of smiles. Things bubble in the air between them: relief, gratitude, elation, plus all that cannot be named but fortunately need not be spoken.

"Ben," she says. She is compelled to press a hand to his cheek, feeling real skin, full of life, and then feeling his expression twist into... _oh_ , he really does have the brightest smile.

She opens her mouth to say something more, but finds any words redundant. She can _feel_ him, and he her, can feel every thought that flickers through his mind – though each thought is the same, all of them bursting with wonder and saying _Rey Rey Rey_.

They breathe. Perhaps one breath, perhaps a thousand, before either of them move.

It’s only after Rey extricates herself from their embrace, stands, and looks at something other than Ben’s shining eyes, that she starts to think again. She _died_. Ben gave her _life_. And yet here she stands, he stands, more alive than she’s ever seen him.

A voice echoes the words of Rey's masters, Leia, Luke:

_The Force is a constant, neither created nor destroyed, but moving within us, between us._

_Powerful light, powerful darkness...That Force does not belong to the Jedi…Can you feel that?_

She can. She _can_ feel it, the push and pull, life and death...but as always, with her and Ben, there’s something more. She crouches back down to Ben, who cradles his broken leg, just to make sure. She can hear his pulse, full and loud, in time with her own, the Force undulating between them on every heartbeat. He gave her life, but in doing so tapped into not merely his own life force but...into _them_ , into what they were that was beyond each of them alone, not Ben or Rey but the greater thing that was one.

_A dyad in the force...a power like life itself._

She thinks about what it feels to be alone: weary, hopeless, lost. She thinks about what it feels to be with Ben, with Finn, with Poe and Rose, and Leia, and her new family who live in creaky ships and leaky tents in a base on Ajan Kloss.

Their hearts only beat louder.

_The two that are one...and are stronger for it._

*

The colossal Sith statutes can no longer glare down at the two figures who slump and scrabble their way through the crypt, for they have been reduced to naught but dust and rubble. Rey half-carries Ben, supporting his shattered leg. When he passes out, it’s only her months of physical training which allow her to drag him bodily the rest of the way to the X-wing.

She rouses him with a cool hand against his forehead, and he half-climbs, half-faints into the cockpit. He manages to fall artfully, draped across the portside controls.

"Rey..." he mumbles in a fleeting fit of wakefulness. "I don't know..."

"You're coming home. To the resistance," she says, forcefully.

"Oh." He squeezes his eyes shut more tightly, clearly in pain. "Good...good..."

"I mean," Rey hesitates. She feels his fear, but it builds to hard resolve. "Well. You don't have to –"

"I know what I have to do.”

"I wasn't going to say that. I meant, you don't have to do it alone."

Rey follows Ben into the cockpit with considerably more grace and consciousness. She rearranges his limbs so that his broken leg is nestled firmly against the padded seat and Rey herself can squeeze against the starboard side.

It’s an entirely uncomfortable arrangement. One that Rey worries might interfere with her ability to navigate Exegol's atmosphere. In fact, Rey will barely remember tackling the solar winds, shock waves, and falling debris – she will remember how strange it was to feel Ben's chest against her back, more often than not rising and falling precisely in time with her own breaths.

It strikes her how close she came to being alone forever, with only the ghosts of the Sith for company. It strikes her how, now, she might never be alone again, if she so chooses.

*

Poe, strangely – or not at all strangely, when Rey really thinks about it – is the first to lower his blaster when Rey helps Ben out of the X-wing only for him to fall at the feet of half of the resistance's fighting force.  
  
"Stand down," Poe calls, though his eyes don’t leave Ben, who is now collapsed in the dirt and floating just on the brink of unconsciousness. "Get a medic. If you have to cuff him for them to be willing to treat him, so be it, but get a medic."

Rey crouches by Ben, makes a show of inspecting his leg, but really she’s steeling herself to met all the many pairs of eyes that now bore into her. BB-8 rolls up to them.  
  
She feels Poe’s heavy stare, and hears the people begin to murmur.

“This is where the hard bit starts,” she tells BB-8. The droid beeps back an assurance.

Poe clears a way through the crowd, hollering for everyone to get back to their posts and their parties. But the aura in the camp has already shifted from celebratory to...unspeakably tense.

Rey feels suddenly uncertain about what, an hour ago, felt like the most certain thing in the universe. She manages to stand. She returns Poe’s hug, first – which is the easy bit - and then steps back to meet Poe's eyes.

"So. What's the deal," he deadpans.

Rey finds she has no words for what the 'deal' might actually be.

Poe continues, softer, "I'm trusting you, Rey. You have to trust me, too."

Rey breathes out. “He wanted to come home.”

“Yeah.” Poe’s mouth quirks. “Finn and Jannah had the same idea.” Rey follows his gaze to the southern edge of the clearing. Through the trees, a pyre burns, and a line of stormtroopers proceed one by one, removing their armour and tossing it into the flames.

“How-“

“I don’t know. They staged a full-scale stormtrooper mutiny…I still don’t know how they did it. You’d have to ask Finn. It’s probably, you know, that thing he’ll only talk to you about.”

“And…that thing he’ll only talk to _you_ about?”

“Eh. You know. Hasn’t come up yet.”

Before Rey can reply, to tell Poe he really should just _bring it up_ , they all came so close to dying and this really isn’t the time for pride and fear or being alone when you don’t have to be – she’s interrupted when Finn bursts through a crowd of people pretending not to side-eye the odd trio of General, Jedi, and Supreme Leader. Rey is enveloped by a hug so tight it allows her to finally breathe out, Poe grasps her hand against Finn's back, and Rey thinks _there are different kinds of homes._

She owes it to them. She owes them trust.

“Finn,” she murmurs. He pulls back to look her in the eyes, his own glistening with tears. Rey again fights the urge to cry; here is _Finn_ , alive, and together.

Only after Finn nods, and she nods back, does he look down at Ben lying beside them, unconscious and propped up against the X-wing landing gear, receiving initial first aid from a couple of medics.

“I thought this might happen,” he says, soft and heavy.

“You knew?”

“Yeah. Yeah, well, _Leia_ knew a lot of things. We spoke a lot, before the wayfinder mission, I don't know if you noticed...”

“I didn't. I didn't, I'm sorry, I – I haven't been me, these past weeks.”

“I know that too. We talked about that, Leia and I did.”

Finn seems unsure of what else to say, so she is treated to another hug. “You should see a medic, get some rest. We'll talk about the other thing later, huh?”

Rey knows what he means, but asks anyway, “What other thing?”

“Him.”

*

The still-unconscious Ben is carted to a medical tent on the edge of the jungle clearing. Rey keeps careful watch over him, but thinks perhaps she needn’t worry – the resistance has, until recently, been led by Leia, and she remains the resistance’s emotional heart. Ben is the last living thing left of her. The vast privilege that affords him, even amongst people who could rightly despise him, doesn’t escape Rey's notice.

In any case, Leia was a good – brilliant – general. She spent a lifetime grappling with the ethics of power and government, pacifism and conflict, justice and war. Her values inspired every member of the resistance, from B-wing pilots to assistant nurses. Ben Solo might as well be an honoured guest, and the former stormtroopers are treated likewise.

That said, it’s clear to Rey that no one quite knows what to do with Ben. Beyond setting his leg, stitching up his surface wounds, providing him with meals and setting 24-hour guards outside his tent – what is to be done with the former Supreme Leader of the First Order, their lifelong enemy and oppressor? Ben poses a very different question to the stormtroopers, who find support from Finn and Jannah and the others from Endor’s moon. There are dozens of people who directly understand their experiences as kidnapped children, raised for war. The only one here with any understanding of Ben is Ben himself, and by extension Rey.

Ben is complicated by legacy, by his Skywalker blood, and then again by the long hand of Emperor Palpatine stretching through the years to shadow his mind. He is complicated by rank, by his use of the dark side of the Force, and by his family.

Rey struggles to fathom the depths of it all.

She visits him, and sits for hours beside his cot, in those first few days. Most of the time he sleeps in a drug-induced haze. The rest of the time, he merely pretends to do so.

If Rey is honest, she isn’t sure what to do with him either. On Exegol, it seemed so simple: she was alive, Ben was alive, they were together, they were going home. She forgot that reality was always more complex.

She holds his hand, often, and reaches out to his dreams. Desperation makes her do it. Desperation to see him, speak to him, to make him know that she’s there, that however difficult this next step might be he won’t have to take it alone. In his dreams, she sees death: Han's, Luke's, Leia's, her own.

And Ben's.

In his dreams, he dies on Exegol. He slips into black and the nothing beyond, easy as falling rain. She looks at herself through his eyes, gives life to her, then lies back to find a final, lasting peace.

She supposes this is what he wanted, if he dreams about it so. Death is easier. Death is for symbols and martyrs. One good act might redeem a life of evil deeds, for one asks no more of the dead. The dead are respected and their sacrifice praised. The dead don’t know consequence, atonement, or the demands of justice. The dead are merely dead; at peace, no matter how they may have raged in life. 

Now, Ben’s future is far less certain than death. It’s certain to hold guilt, work, and worry; coming to terms and the difficult path of atonement. But uncertain in the sense that no one seems to know quite what those things might mean.

It baffles even Rey, or especially Rey. She feels the size of Ben's future, the galaxy-spanning, history-breaking enormity of it, more keenly than anyone.

Death _would_ be easier.

Thinking about Ben makes her head ache and spin with an irreconcilable mix of emotion: burning love, chilling anger, impossible hope, and all-too-possible fear. Above all, she can’t lose him Above all, she can’t lose what he gave her – the sense that she is understood, and can understand him in turn. _That she is known, and knows in turn._

In his dreams, she tells him about her own worries. She can think of little else to do, and somehow it seems to calm him. She tells him about this past year of running and hiding that last spark of the resistance, of training relentlessly but never quite feeling right. She was good enough, strong enough, she knew – but Rey’s lived long enough to learn that the galaxy’s trials require more than merely strength.

She tells him of all the times she thought about reaching out to him, just for some company in which she could voice the worries that plagued her. She tells him what she would have said: _what did you mean by ‘nobody’,_ and _what did you mean ‘not to me’,_ and then _why would a nobody feel the weight of history like this, like a personal burden?_

She tells him now: _I’m still figuring it out_ , and _you’ll help me, won’t you_ , and then _we are the history, we are the future, we can choose, can’t you feel it?_

Ben listens.

*

The “later” talk with Finn about “the other thing" comes in the form of an argument in the bowels of the Millennium Falcon. These days, Rey and Finn are among the only three people Chewie trusts to maintain the ship. Rose is the third, and she crouches beside Rey to inspect the damaged fuel lines while Finn hands them the necessary tools.

Rey checks in with Ben every so often, as has become her habit. Rose is patient when she pauses her work, and when she returns to her body and shakes the remnants of Ben's nightmares from her thoughts. He still sleeps most of the day, though he’s off the drugs now. Rey worries. Work distracts her. Drink ran like rivers in the two days after Exegol, and this afternoon is the first to be populated by busywork instead of celebration.

Rose corners Rey not two minutes into their work, fixing those awfully bright but awfully wise eyes onto her over the corroded pipe they’re supposed to be welding away.

“Finn told me. About Palpatine.” Always such an easy talker, and so matter of fact. It’s refreshing, but Rey never quite knows how to respond. “If you need to talk, I’m here.”

“Thank you. I – another time, maybe?”

Rose nods, and turns her attention back to the Falcon’s innards. “You’ve always seemed more at home as a Skywalker – to me, I mean.”

A _Skywalker_.

Rey has to turn her head and stare at the wall for a solid few minutes, blinking away tears. Rose waits patiently, humming a folk tune.

They get back to work. Rose keeps singing. Finn talks of his plans for the liberated Stormtroopers. The discussion, inevitably, turns to Ben.

“Look, it’s not really my decision what happens with him,” she tells Finn, feeling his pointed look on the back of her head. She focuses on the work in front of her: her two hands, already black with oil stains, and a problem they can fix.

“Not your decision?” Finn is exasperated, and she can’t really blame him. “But you’re a Jedi, the _only_ Jedi – “

"It was the Jedi who made Darth Vader. And played a role in making Kylo Ren."

"And a Jedi who saved him.”

"I didn't. He saved himself."

Finn impatiently taps a spanner against the pipe he’s leaning on. The sound echoes dully throughout the ship, which is empty but for them. “Whose decision, then? He’s not the same as a stormtrooper, you know that.”

“Your decision. Poe’s, too. Maz, Lando, Kaydel, D’acy…it’s the entire resistance who can decide, I’ve never pretended otherwise.”

"He's killed civilians. He killed Han. Tried to kill you. You expect me...us...the whole galaxy that suffered under the First Order's fist...to just forgive him?"

"He has done those things. With Palpatine inside his mind, from childhood. And, he..." Rey's heart aches, but she knows it’s truth. "He doesn't deserve forgiveness."

"What does he deserve then, Rey? Tell me, please, not even because I need to know but because I want to understand."

Rey closes her eyes. "…He deserves to live. And remember. And give himself to the cause of the light. That's what I think. As I said, it's not my decision.”

"You know what they'll say. Why should _he_ live, when they all died?"

"Because...’ Rey pauses. The words don’t come to her easily; the enormity of the matter doesn’t translate well to speech. “ _Because_ , Finn, I know you can feel it. Because it's big. Because it breaks the cycle, because he's the spoke in a wheel we thought would never break."

Finn huffs. "Are you going to tell me about how he turned to the light, helped defeat Palpatine, and saved your life?"

"No,” Rey says. “I won’t.”

"I think what Rey means,” Rose says, “is you have to decide for yourself what he deserves." She smiles at Rey, triggering a sigh deep in her chest.

"That's exactly what I mean."

"Rey, you're not...” Finn hunts for words. “I’m scared for you, you can't change him, you can’t own him, you can't –"

She turns around, crossing her arms and finally looking at Finn. His eyes are soft and earnest as ever. "You're right. I can't. And you're not listening."

Finn sighs. “Yeah, I'm not. I'm not, because I know exactly what it's like to be groomed to terrorise and murder. I also know what it's like to choose differently.”

“I can't tell you what to think, Finn.”

Finn is quiet for a minute.

“Then, guess I need to work it out.”

And with that, he hauls himself out of the Falcon’s underbelly and strides out of the ship. Rey exchanges a single look with Rose before they each follow, at a run.

*

The scene is mythical in its composition: Ben, looking odd in a resistance uniform that’s mussed by sleep and probably a size too small for him, kneels in the entranceway of his small tent, flanked by the dozen guards assigned to him. Finn, his expression and body language unreadable, stands before him, hands spread and empty of any weapon.

Rey races over to disrupt the picture. Each man spares her a glance before turning their attentions back to the other.

“…knew that you would give up the First Order, I don’t know how, but she knew. I want to honour that. But first _I_ need to know, I need to be able to trust that you won’t turn around and destroy my family. I need to know if you’re ever going to hold yourself accountable, or if we have to force that upon you.”

Ben works his jaw. He looks tired, pale.

“So say something,” Finn says.

Rey isn’t sure what that emotion is, radiating out to her through the Force bond – she’s never felt it before, can’t hope to give a name to it. Rey recalls the intensity of Ben’s relief, his gratitude, when they touched hands on Ahch-to – at the feeling of finally being understood, so wholly and naturally, without the need to fit himself to inconsonant words. How could he ever put words to this – this place he occupies in the history of resistance and empire, light and dark – when even Rey cannot?

So, he doesn’t. Ben doesn’t speak, he acts.

In the first instant, Leia’s saber flies from Rey’s belt to his waiting hand. In the next, six guards draw their blasters and jab them against his skull.

Rey holds her breath and waits.

Ben presses the saber into Finn’s open hand, and ignites it so the light angles just above Ben’s bowed head. Then he speaks, and it feels to Rey like they’re her words too – she forgets, they two are now closer to _one_ than they ever were before.

“Kill me, if you wish,” he says. “I don’t mind.” He does mind, she can feel it.

“But I tell you,” Ben swallows, and Rey feels her own throat choke up, “as I tell all of the resistance, that I will never again draw a blade until I am certain I will not do so in anger.”

Instinctively, Rey reaches out to him, tries to lay comfort across his shoulders. Ben shrugs it off, though she feels gratitude in it, and knows this is his moment to face alone.

“I have been gifted life,” Ben continues, to the gathering crowd, “and, if allowed to keep it, I will devote every moment of that life to making things right. No matter what that might require of me. I made my choices, and I submit myself to yours. Kill me, if you wish.” He removes his hands from where they are wrapped around Finn’s, clutching the lightsaber. “But it would be a mercy I don’t know that I deserve.”

The saber hums, singing a lock of Ben’s hair. Minutes pass. Rey holds her breath, and feels it: _this_ is where history turns, _this_ is where legacy lives or dies, _this_ is where time and space narrows into a singularity of choice.

The moment ends, choices made. History rolls into future.

Ben speaks again, to Finn, “You don’t wish to kill me. You are on a Jedi path.”

Ben raises an hand, palm up, before him like a sacrifice. The saber shoots back into his grasp. More blasters are drawn, before the gathered crowd realises his intention. “I offer my hand, then, yours to take, my pain to bear.”

In Rey’s head, Ben’s anguish: _I deserve it, I need it, please give me the pain I deserve to feel._ He raises the saber high, Rey closes her eyes – if it is to be this way, then it is. She is pivotal but not the end of it all, she cannot stand in its path.

It’s Rose who leaps in and bats the saber to the side.

There’s a moment like a held breath. Rose offers a hand to pull Ben to his feet; he takes it, and the two share a curious moment.

“Atonement is difficult work,” she says, ever so quiet – to Ben alone, but Rey is so tuned to him that she hears Rose’s murmur clear as day. “To build bridges you’ll want both those hands.”

Rey feels dizzy. History moves again, a tectonic shift.

The entire resistance waits for Ben to gather himself. “Keep it,” he says, pressing Leia’s saber back into Finn’s hand – on his level, now, they stand as if equals. Finn frowns down at the lightsaber.

“He’s right,” Rey says, and the rightness of the saber in Finn’s hands makes her smile. “It’s yours, until you make one of your own.”

“…you knew?” Finn asks her.

“I knew,” Rey sighs. “I’m only sorry I didn’t stop to tell you. I haven’t been…a friend, not a good one, these past few days, weeks, even… I wasn't sure until the day on Exegol. I felt you, reaching out through the Force, turning the tide of the battle.”

Rey grasps Finn’s hand where it holds the saber. “Thank you.” _For being one of the those who made me feel so much less alone. For making the choice when I could not._

“Alright, alright,” Poe’s commanding voice ends the moment, and suddenly the present feels present again. “Clear out, you, the show’s over, I know you’ve all got jobs to do and they’re sure as hell not being done while you stand and gape.” The watching crowd begins to disperse.

“Alright, _General_?” Finn seems to be standing taller than he was just a minute ago.

“Alright, _Jedi_?” Poe jostles Finn with his shoulder.

Rey catches Rose rolling her eyes, and laughs – now that time feels like it’s moving again, and the Force resuming its natural flow, what is there to do but laugh? Poe narrows his eyes at them both but marches away in close concert with his co-general.

Ben remains, standing awkwardly with head bowed and hands clasped. He looks suddenly young.

Rey says to Rose, “I’ll join you back at the Falcon in a minute, okay?”

Rose brushes a hand down Rey’s arm – Rey loves that way about her, those casual touches that make all her friends into family. “Sure, take your time. I just – Rey?”

“Yeah?”

Rose’s gaze flickers over to Ben for an instant. “I need to give you a hug.”

“Oh.”

Rose pulls her tight, and Rey presses her chin into Rose’s soft back, and listens to Rose whisper in her ear.

“I’m so proud of you. I really am. You rose from the darkest of places and now you’re just so…bright, you know? You fought blood, he fought nurture, and here you are, both home. In the light. I’m sorry, I just – doesn’t it feel like hope?”

*

In a matter of months, under the leadership of Co-Generals Dameron, the resistance turns from rebel military into the galaxy’s leading peacebuilders. Rey flits from mission to mission, planet to planet, sniffing out the last pockets of First Order allegiants and quelling conflict where it arises in the war’s fallout. 

Ben spends those weeks travelling, too. He rebuilds cities, heals the wounded, and offers himself up for the galaxy’s judgement wherever he goes. Rey hears rumours about the man who lifts entire star destroyers from the planets on which they crashed, who heals towns full of people suffering from diseases the First Order spread to quash rebellion, who carries small children back to the families from which they were taken.

Rey thinks often about something Ben said to her that day on Ajan Kloss, the day his future was decided: _I can sit in a dark room until I die, or I can go out and use my own two hands._

They’re busy, but they talk most days. More accurately, they _see_ each other most days – talking is a luxury when you’re rebuilding a galaxy, as they both are. Even more so for Ben, who sets on his path of atonement with such devotion that Rey worries he’ll wear himself into an early grave. It’s not guilt she’s concerned about – Ben takes that in his stride – it’s the passion, the unbridled energy he puts into each task. He bears no weapons anymore – no blaster or saber. He works only with his own mind, his own two hands. Rey worries he’ll put himself in harm’s way.

Ben assures her he has no plans to die any time soon, that he has a lifetime of penance ahead of him and he has decided to live it. In any case, Rey thinks she knows what it is to choose your own life, and what it takes to choose right.

The people she meets say _Rey_ in the same sentence as _saviour_. Word goes ahead of her, not only in news broadcasts but in tales told in whispered tones of awe. She always wonders what they’d think if she told them about the darker powers that stirred in her blood. But Ben reminds her: _there’s dark in all blood. Skywalker blood, too; I’m proof. It’s choice that matters. You showed me that. Thank you. Thank you._

But they don’t always talk. Sometimes Rey reaches out across the galaxy just to feel him, be with him for the briefest moment. Sometimes it’s Ben who calls on her, for a second of comfort, of deepest understanding.

Eventually, there’s a lull in the rhythm of reconstruction, and Rey seizes it. She asks Chewie to accompany her in the Falcon, and they fly to Tattooine. The desert planet isn’t quite as hot as Jakku, and it lacks the rolling dunes, but the emptiness is the same. Anyway, it isn’t for her – it’s for Luke, and Leia. It’s for those three generations of Skywalkers about whom Leia had told countless stories. Rose calls it a pilgrimage. Finn calls it _why on earth would you want to go to that godforsaken_ …

The stillness as Rey steps off the Falcon is oddly comforting. It’s quiet, and vast; it’s like going back to Jakku and seeing all her childhood spread out before her.

She buries the lightsabers her masters once wielded. The resistance have no need for them now – Rey’s built her own, from her old staff (yellow, like desert sands, like a noonday sun). Finn has, too (white, like stormtrooper armour, like safety and peace). They pay homage to their pasts and claim ownership of a burgeoning future.

For good measure, she kicks off her shoes and revels in the feel of cool sand between her toes. She stops to watch the suns rise.

“I’m not sure I’ll ever be worthy of this.”

She turns, and there is Ben, a silhouette against golden light. Rey recalls their bond before Exegol – how it always felt like pushing and being pulled, all at once, like chaos and discord. Now, it’s merely sameness; harmony.

“I’ll never be worthy,” he repeats, although he’s smiling. He gestures broadly at the desert, the rising suns, at Rey. “But I’ll spend the rest of my days trying."

She wants to tell Ben that it’s not about what anyone deserves, but what they choose. She doesn’t. That's just one of the things he’ll learn for himself.

“I hear they’re calling you Skywalker,” he says, running a hand through his hair. He’s growing it long, past his shoulders. “You chose it?”

“I did.”

“Good. It suits.”

Rey steps closer to him. “Where are you now?”

“Guess.” He smiles again; Rey will never tire of seeing it. “I’m on Ahch-to. Figured some penance was due to the old Jedi. Luke and the rest.”

“Don’t let him hear you call him old.”

“Oh, he won’t, the old man.” He chuckles.

Silence settles again over the Tattooine desert. Then, Ben's face breaks. His next words come in a croak, “Finding the light, saving the resistance, healing you…” he swallows audibly. “I thought it would be the last thing I ever did.”

It almost consumes her, sometimes, this overwhelming sameness – the way it feels to know another, and to be utterly understood, down to her skin and nerves and bones. They each have their own journeys, their own demons to bargain with, their own wars to shape into peace: she can't do his penance for him, neither he can be all the answers she’s always looked for. But alone they will never be.

“You’ll just have to keep doing it, then, won’t you?” Rey says.

It’s only then that she realises how Ben is looking at her. He’s deeply awkward, a ruffled maypole, out of his element. Although, when Rey considers it, he’s always looked that way – except on Exegol. On Exegol, the way he stood and moved and held himself felt natural, right, _inevitable_ ; every second of it. If he has an element, it’s with Rey, it’s with the light, it’s peace through hard-won purpose.

What they are, each of them together, it’s so _big_ …but Rey suddenly knows what to do with it.

She steps halfway across the galaxy and into Ben’s orbit. Caught off guard, he stumbles, but he’s still looking at her _that way_ and it’s all Rey can do, all Rey can _think_ to do, to push him a few more steps backward and kiss him.

It's awkward, quick, and Rey's afraid she's bruised his lip with her teeth. Her heart feels like it might burst out of her chest, beating for two. The Force bond roars, Rey feels Ben’s shock rising in pitch, and they are inundated.

In a blink, Ben disappears. Rey almost falls over.

She laughs.

The sun is warm against her back, the sand cool over her toes, and she laughs, and it feels like so many beginnings. She laughs, and BB-8 beeps back and spins in circles, and Ben is smiling somewhere on the other side of the galaxy (she knows, feels it like instinct, like inevitability), and she rocks her heels back in the sand and tips her head up to the sky. The sky is starless, but in it she sees echoes.

_Doesn't it feel like hope?_


End file.
